How not to get a job at Sequoia

You have to admire the George Costanza-like persistence of one Anand Lyer Vaidyanathan. After hanging around the Sequoia lobby a little too much last October and November, Vaidyanathan was finally arrested for trespassing. Vaidyanathan protested, convinced that he somehow already worked for Sequoia. He then applied for another Sequoia job in December, and when a private investigator told him to stay away and not contact anyone in the office again, Vaidyanathan responded with, "I thank you for your offer. I appreciate your timely action. I accept your offer of employment." So they just went ahead and hired him; really, what else could they do? Only kidding! They took out a restraining order. Incidentally, that wasn't all Sequoia had to deal with as 2006 came to a close.

The VC giant also had a tussle with Comventures — they of the recent Filmloop discorporation — when Comventures attempted to rip off Sequoia's website design. After some litigatory saber-rattling, Comventures backed down and settled, though terms were not disclosed. Perhaps Comventures could have used the Vaidyanathan strategy, and responded to Sequoia's demands with something like, "We thank you for your website design. We appreciate your timely action. We accept your copyrighted work for our own use."